


Spindle's End

by RhineGold



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Fairy Tales, Invasive Touching, Ownership Issues, Quest, sensory issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-29 20:32:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhineGold/pseuds/RhineGold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Within the depths of the cage, something glimmered, shifting and unspooling to become an arm. Fingers, gnarled and twisted, blackened with grime and grease, danced haphazardly on the air before fluttering against her cheek. They tapped the smooth skin there, as gentle as a hummingbird despite the wicked tips at the fingernail.</p><p>"Please," She murmured urgently, torn between jerking her face away and leaning into that strangely warm touch. "Tell me what's wrong with me. I know you know. They say you know everything."</p><p>----</p><p>A sheltered princess must undertake a perilous journey to break a monstrous curse before her time runs out. Her only companion is a powerful sorcerer, long kept captive by her parents in the depths beneath their Utopian throne. Mad and desperate, completely untrustworthy, he will prove her salvation or her undoing... if she doesn't kill him first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration from this story comes from the lovely Bundyshoes, who drew the art that has been scratching at the back of my mind for some time now. A monster mash of quite a few fairy tales and what might have beens.

 

~*~

_Holly and the Ivy_

  
_When they are both full grown_   
_Of all the trees in the wood_   
_Holly bears the crown_   


  
_He waits for her to find_   
_The heart she left behind_   


  
_Holly and the Ivy_   
_The running of the deer_   
_For the Rose to bloom_   
_Holly waits every year_   


  
-Tori Amos

~*~

She has a map. 

It’s dark and drafty, making the flame in the lantern flicker and shudder violently. It’s enough to see by, if only just barely. She has a map, and is certainly not lost. 

This is the furthest she has made it - normally Granny manages to catch her on the stairs or outside a door, leaving her just enough time to stuff the battered parchment down her dress front. They’ve stopped believing her excuses, so she stops bothering with them. The castle is stifling and she wants something more than her lessons and her toys. Adventure lurks in mysterious corners and forgotten passageways, and it’s the closest to the stories her parents have that she will ever get. 

And so she finds herself wandering, deeper and further and lower, until she is in a passageway made claustrophobic with murk and dank and cobwebs. Finally, she reaches the end of the passageway, her path blocked by a solid oak door, barred and locked with a huge beam of iron. In the flickering light, she realizes the iron is interwoven, strangely, with silver - a delicate, weaving pattern, mimicking vines and flowers winding across the piece. 

The line of hallway on the map ends here. Whatever lies beyond this door cannot be too far from the portal itself. The door is solid and looks as though it would require many men to budge it, so there is no hope at all for a girl of nine. 

She leans against the wall, just to the left of the door, exhaling a deep breath of disappointment. Her excitement began to ebb, leaving the bitter sting of sadness in its wake. She had been so sure this would be the culmination of her exploring - that something truly adventurous lay behind the edge of her map. 

A stronger gust of wind causes her to shiver, and she pulls her sweater tighter around herself. The motion makes the lantern bang against her hip, and the tiny flame flickers dangerously, before guttering out, leaving her in darkness. She stumbles back automatically, shoulders hitting the wall hard as the claustrophobic air swallows her. And suddenly, she is falling, backwards and down, tripping over a pile of stones and rubble to land on her hands and knees. Her shriek of surprise echoes around her, making her ears ring.

The map is crumpled against her chest and her knee feels raw and painful where a sharp bit of stone digs in deeply. It takes her a moment to realize she has fallen through a weak point in the wall. She is beyond the door. 

In the darkness, she hears something move.

It isn’t a footstep. It isn’t a slither. Just a faint rustle of something dragging against stone. 

Pushing herself up onto her arms, she deliberately closes her eyes, counting to ten before opening them again. Her range of vision is improved, and there is a pale sliver of light far, far above her head. It gives just enough light for her to make out something watching her in the darkness. 

She can see the faint reflection of a pair of large eyes. 

“Hello?” She calls, keeping her voice calm and confident. She isn’t afraid, only cautious. She’d come here for an adventure, after all.

At first, the sound she hears makes no sense. It is rough and grating, with a high edge, like something being pushed slowly across stone. Eventually, she realizes it is a voice and there are words. 

The voice repeats itself eventually, “… _Lost, dearie?_ “ 

“I’m not lost,” She answers, rolling until she is on her knees before pushing up to her feet. The eyes never blink. “I have a map,” She adds, holding out the crumpled paper in one grubby fist. 

The scraping, rustling sound is different now, and she realizes it is laughing at her. “What are you?” She asks, voice cross now in her embarrassment. 

It stops then, and she wonders if it will answer. 

Feeling more curious than brave, she takes a step forward. She can hear footsteps behind her, the hurried half-jog that Granny employs when she realizes she’s lost her charge in the depths of the castle again. 

Something else glitters in the low light, and just before the lantern behind her destroys her night vision, she realizes they are teeth. 

“Emma! Come away from there!” Granny’s voice is like thunder in the echoing space, and she can hear the tang of real fear there. Feeling guilty, she turns back towards the light and the creature scuffles further back into the darkness. 

As she’s dragged forcibly through the crumbled wall, she turns, tossing her hair over one shoulder, peering uselessly into the space behind her. She can see the bars now. It is a cage. And though it may be only an echo, she thinks she can make out the sound of that strange, broken voice whispering her name. 

~*~


	2. Figures of Men and Animals

~*~

_Seven Years Later_

The girl could hear the footsteps thundering above, echoing throughout the passage. Desperately, she clung to the bars of the cage before her, thrusting her face through the bars.

"Answer me!" She repeated, voice splitting between anger and anxiety.

Within the depths of the cage, something glimmered, shifting and unspooling to become an arm. Fingers, gnarled and twisted, blackened with grime and grease, danced haphazardly on the air before fluttering against her cheek. They tapped the smooth skin there, as gentle as a hummingbird despite the wicked tips at the fingernail.

"Please," She murmured urgently, torn between jerking her face away and leaning into that strangely warm touch. "Tell me what's wrong with me. I know you know. They say you know everything."

The voice that slunk out of the darkness was the same that had echoed in her dreams since childhood. "...Do they... now..."

Her father's voice then, just beyond the massive door. They'd break through her flimsey barricade soon, and she curled her cheek towards those fingers, silently urging the prisoner to continue.

A hissing sound then, one she realized was surprise. The fingers twitched away, vanishing from her sight briefly, returning quicker, arched and coiled. She yelped despite herself as the hand closed against the collar of her shirt. He drew her forward with a strength she hadn't expected and she could smell the rot of his breath as he exhaled in her face.

Where he held her, one finger tapped out, touching her breast bone three times in rapid succession. "Poor little princess," He sang, voice as inky as the depths in which he dwelt, "How sad to have such a vital piece go... missing~" His voice rose then to a higher pitch on the last word, splintering into a sound that would have been a giggle if it hadn't shattered like glass in his throat.

"What do you mean?"

"Emma!" Her father again, and the door was open now.

A hand closed over her wrist and she lashed out with her other hand, catching the one reaching out through the bars. "What?!" She cried, clinging to him desperately, "What am I missing?"

"Don't answer that!" Her father ordered, trying to wedge between them, still holding her wrist. Over his shoulder, she could see her best friend standing in the doorway, wringing her hands in her shawl, face a picture of discomfort. She had known who must have told them, but the reality of the betrayal still stung.

From within the cage, the arm shifted, twisting until the fingers closed over her own in an awkward, surely-uncomfortable grip and she had her answer at last. "Your _heart_ , missie. Ask them about your heart..."

Her father's shoulder clanged against the bars then, and she let go despite herself. The prisoner scuttled back, into the further depths of the cage, snarling low in his throat like an animal.

Blue eyes met hers as she was wrenched around and pressed against the bars. "Emma, don't listen to him. He can't be trusted."

"Why not?" She shouted suddenly, her fears and frustrations boil over at long last, "He's the only one who'll tell me the truth! What's wrong with me?! What _am_ I?"

Behind him, Lexie pressed one hand to her mouth as though she would be ill.

After a long moment, the fierce expression on her father's face softened, mutating into one of sorrow. "Emma... You're cursed."

In the darkness, she heard the rustling, whistling sound that she often dreamt of - laughter.

~*~

> Once upon a time, there lived a fair and beautiful queen and her brave husband, a noble and charming prince. Their love was great and strong, crossing all boundaries and overcoming all obstacles. Theirs was surely to be a happy ever-after.
> 
> In time, their joy was compounded, and the queen gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. All who looked on her did so with fondness and joy, and she was loved. On the day of her naming, the entire kingdom came at the royal couple's behest, bringing gifts and well-wishes, sweet and lavish and generous.
> 
> However, all was not happy in this kingdom, and one visitor did so uninvited and unwanted - an evil witch who carried a powerful grudge against the queen.
> 
> That day, she laid a curse upon the newborn babe, that she might lose her heart to darkness, and, before the end of her 21st year, the princess would surely fall down dead.
> 
> The couple wept in despair, for the curse was powerful, the magic dark.
> 
> In there sorrow, there came one final guest, the leader of the faeries, whose magic was also powerful, and her intentions good. She could not remove the curse, she told them sadly, but she could do her small part to change it.
> 
> The princess, she declared, would not lose her heart - not all of it, at least. And therefore, should the princess manage to reclaim the missing piece before the timeframe was accomplished, she would surely break the curse and be spared.
> 
> The kingdom rejoiced, and the queen and her prince raised their child in the most protective, loving way. They shielded her from harm, including the truth of her fate, so as to protect her until she could be ready to seek her destiny.
> 
> Finally, the day came to pass that marked the start of the girl's twenty-first year. The faeries had determined now would be the time to begin her quest. They banded together all of their magics in order to grant the princess one all-important wish. Anything she could ask for to aid her on her journey was to be hers.
> 
> Some thought she would ask for protection, others for a mighty blade. Instead, she asked for something far more humble in appearance, with far more power than any of those things. It was well-within the abilities of those assembled to grant it to her, and after a long battle of wills, the princess had her way.
> 
> She was given, as her boon, the one thing they had never even considered. She asked only for a single dagger.

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case of any confusion, Emma is nine in the prologue and sixteen here. The main story will take place when she is 21.


	3. Both Treasure and Danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay in getting this together. I've been suffering from horrible writer's block and terrible indecisiveness regarding how to go about putting all the bits and bobbles of this story into a cohesive work. 
> 
> This chapter contains a character suffering from sensory overload and manhandling and inappropriate touching.

~*~

The dagger in her hands feels as bent and gnarled as the creature they pry out of the darkness of the cell. Unsealing the prison had proven more complicated than anticipated, further solidifying the concept that it had _never_  been intended to be reopened.

Finally, with the last bits pf spells worked, the last seals unlocked, the bars parted, some lifting and some lowering by means she could not decipher. She hangs back in the shadows near the massive doors, one hip against the wall. The patched stonework under her thigh still bears the testament of a nine year-old's furtive explorations. On her signal, the guards enter the cell.

He fights them at every turn, clinging to the bars and the walls, snarling and biting, lashing out with all four limbs, his head, and anything he can move. One soldier goes reeling, clutching his throat as blood blossoms, thick and dark. The wound is superficial and he seems more angry than pained once the shock of it has worn off. Finally, they subdue him enough to lift him, the largest man wrapping an arm around his middle and spinning, allowing his momentum to carry them both to the mouth of the cell. The guard releases him, whether by accident or design, and he tumbles across the floor, fetching up a few feet from her boots.

For a moment, there is stillness, the quiet punctuated only by his low, deep gasps for breath. Each exhalation sounds almost like a sob and her pity overtakes her intention to follow her father's orders.

"Hey," She murmurs, going down on one knee. The flagstones of the cavern are cold beneath her, soaking quickly through the soft cloth, but she knows that is not why he is shivering. Not entirely. He flinches away from her hand and she lowers it slowly.

Wild, matted tufts of hair cling to his neck and shoulders in a series of choking vines, tangling down around his arms and lower still. He wears only rags now - what might have been a coat once, with breeches reduced to tatters of leather and dirt.

The eyes are the same - as wide and reflective as she remembers - animalistic in nature, something caught midway between horse and cat. He peers up at her through the mass of hair like an animal awaiting its slaughter. She wonders if he can see the knife, but thinks her arm and the coil of her hair must block it from this angle.

There is a high-pitched sound, more hiss than whine, and he swallows thickly before trying again. " _You..._ " He breathes, and some of the tension shifts, letting his bony shoulders slouch enough to give him a neck.

"I'm not going to hurt you," She promises quietly. The shoulders do not relax any further. She stands then and he doesn't move from his position at her feet.

"Princess..." One of the guards begins, stepping towards them, and that triggers a reaction, though. With a rustling sound, he surges forward in a motion that begins as fluid and ends in a heap as he slings round her knees. She can feel bony fingers scabbering at her calf and he hunches down tight into a ball. The tickle of hair against the back of her knee is distracting.

The guard stops, chastised, when she holds up a hand. The gesture is haughty and angry and he falls back into the loose formation, bowing his head. As slowly and gently as she can manage, she steps away from him, turning and bending until they are face to face. He stares at her as though he had no concept of another person in his personal space and she realizes belatedly that, after all this time, he likely really doesn't.

"I need you to go with them, and let them clean you up, okay?" It's difficult to keep her voice gentle and soothing without sounding condescending and she wonders briefly if this is how her parents feel when addressing her. "You need to let them do their work, okay? No one is going to hurt you. No magic, and you don't hurt anyone, understand?"

He peers at her for another endless moment. She can see the confusion knit across his brow, but he finally nods, hair rustling about him like a living thing.

"Just... don't be any trouble," She repeats, getting back to her feet. Nodding at the guards, she allows them to approach. "Have him cleaned thoroughly and find him something to wear. Bring him to my rooms when he's done."

Rumpelstiltskin, still the most feared creature in their lands, allows himself to be hauled out of the floor and led from the room. The guards guide him, one on each side, holding him under the arm. She watches him go, feeling pity war with anticipation. Finally, she was getting somewhere.

Still, the unstable expression in those wide, bright eyes has left her feeling cold.

~*~

The low torchlight flickering in the halls is blinding after all this time.

His eyes, always too large and so sensitive for so long, ache and burn with it, but he does not look away. There is no way of knowing how long it will last.

He drinks in the echoes of their footfalls over the stone, the scent of food wafting up from somewhere beyond them, and the colour of the tapestries drowning out the grey of the walls. It has been so long. She is a woman now and she was only a dream then, a swell of belly and a promise that would remain brutally unfulfilled.

He'd spent centuries setting a table only to have it upended by a single woman's heart. Such is always the way with him, it seems.

The guards on either side of him adjust their grips as they alight the stairs. Their hands are hard, bruising, biting into his thin limbs, but he welcomes the pain. His skin had stopped responding to his own touch long ago and now is the first time he has felt the shift of his own blood within himself in decades.

No magic, she said, and he finds it is true. They must have advanced their prison techniques, he decides - figured out a way to extend his cell's dampening abilities to their whole palace. Perhaps beyond. The thought is sickening, twisting, and unsettling, but he pushes it away in favor of trying to gauge his current situation.

He tries to keep up with them, tries to make his stride long and angular the way it used to be. He used to saunter - used to strut - but now it is all he can do to keep his legs under him. The muscles twist and bend, screaming protest after all this time. He panics with each sway and stumble, fist curling around air where a staff might have been once, and they interpret these reflexive spasms as a threat, shaking him harder, moving him faster.

Finally, they have reached their destination - a large white room with a pool of water so dazzling he cannot break his gaze from it. He sees his own reflection for the first time, horrified by what even he has managed to become. He is a twisted, tangled thing now - the imp they always called him, with no sign of the spinner's human face.

His skin has thickened, hardened, after years of neglect. It coils over his joints like a serpent, gnarled and pebbled like ragged stone. His hair is a snarl of tufts, curls long since rubbed and pulled into piles, as pale and brittle as the wool he used to pick beside his fire.

The sight of a knife at his left sends him spiraling away, but it is only a guard with a whittling blade, cutting away what remains of his clothing after decades of damp and rot. When he moves, the largest of the guards takes hold of him again, gripping his arms like a vise and he doesn't even have the where-with-all to struggle because it is too invasive and his senses threaten to overload from the constant stimulation. He cannot bite back the bark of pain as what had once been the ribbing of his vest is ripped free from where it has nearly melded with his skin.

A woman steps into the gap as the guard moves away, running her fingers experimentally over the tear. She murmurs something to the other attendants, but he cannot hear it over the sound of his own breathing, echoing harshly in his ears. Her hand trails down, over the taut and sunken planes of his abdomen and further.

"Wait..." He tries to plead, but his mouth cannot open and the hardness of the skin against his throat is crushing his windpipe when he breathes too deeply. They ignore him, if they heard him at all, and what remains of his trousers are taken too. The pain makes him double over, sagging hard against the man still holding him, and the woman is clucking something that sounds too condescending to be soothing.

The world spins, a violent riot of colour, and there is something heavy and choking around him, closing up over his head. It takes him longer than he would like to admit to realize that it is water and that he has been submerged in the pool.

It burns. The temperature is one that would be more suited to laundry, but he supposes it is fitting, because that is how they touch him.

There are people beside him, women and a few men, and their hands rip over his flesh, making him cry out, making him drink in the water he still cannot quite manage to get his head out of. The woman who had touched him first is the ringleader, raising a long, rectangular wire brush and taking hold of his arm in a brutal grip.

It doesn't hurt at first. It feels almost pleasant, actually. He can feel the skin changing, sloughing off in flakes that sink like miniature stones around them. He can feel air in places he has forgotten exist and it is a blessing.

Until it becomes something else entirely.

One of the attendants shifts, reaching through the water like a broken, slow thing, scooping his palm until he has captured a particularly large bit of dead, hardened skin. It shimmers like a scale when he raises his hand free of the bath and a hush falls over the assembled for a moment.

The man raises it tentatively to his mouth, licking his lips briefly before biting down on the piece. Someone makes a sound of disgust, but his crow of surprise drowns it out. "...It's gold."

~*~

He hits the floor of the pool on his knees, biting back a sharp gasp as his head is wrenched back. The brush on his throat makes him buck and thrash weakly, but they are drawing his arms back now, forcing him to arch his back painfully against the side of the pool. A woman climbs out and perches on the edge, straddling his shoulders with her thighs. Gripping his hair tighter, she moves her brush in a sawing motion over his throat, cutting through the buildup of scales with brutal efficiency. Something moves over his jugular, shifting free for the first time in years and he chokes on his own inhalation of breath as his neck seems to double in length.

"Look at that," She hisses in his ear, holding the thick panel of flesh up for him to see. "We're doing you a favor, really, aren't we now?"

He doesn't even try to respond. She didn't care either way.

~*~

Time seems to have slowed to a brittle, tangled fog. He cannot remember when he entered this place - indeed, part of him is convinced he has always been here, and will never leave. His neck is cracking with pain, despite the large hand on the back of it meant to steady him. On either side, his hair is clenched, clever fingers working at the matted snarls, leaving something more recognizable as humanoid but leaving his scalp burning and raw.

He keeps his eyes closed and tries to ignore the hands between his thighs, pinching and prying at places now soft again, seeking out any last flecks of precious metal that might remain.

They are talking around him, and when he hears his own name, he makes an effort to understand the sounds echoing behind and above him, though they run through his brain like the water still cradling his chest.

"But you know the princess," One woman is saying, "She's always had a taste for... exotic pets..."

"I can't say I'd disagree with her at this point," The man behind him replies, and the fingers turn, slipping higher. He wants to move, to scream, to rip them into shreds and grind their bones into powder, but all he can do is squirm.

"Still, it's scandalous what her parents are allowing her to do," The woman protests. "She's a princess of the blood - she shouldn't sully herself with these sorts of things."

"It'll be good for her," The man disagrees. "It's time she had real power over something." The fingers twist again, and part.

Rumpelstiltskin closes his eyes and drifts away in the whirlwind of his thoughts, trying to leave his flesh as easily as it has been parted from him.

~*~

He cleans up nicely, she decides, the thought surprising her as much as his sudden appearance in her chambers.

Carmine has only just left her, the maidservant assuring her that he would be ready soon. Almost immediately thereafter, the side door leading down to the baths had opened, with a slight figure unceremoniously thrust inside.

They've seen to him thoroughly, as she'd asked, and an attempt has been made at taming the wild mess that is his hair. It hangs, long and loose, down his back, a curtain of curls not quite brown but not entirely golden. Someone has dressed him in a loose, white tunic and a pair of black, leather pants that she suspects might have come from her own closet. It is a decent fit, considering. He really is small for a man. If that's what he really is at all.

He does not look at her, his wide, glittering eyes dancing from side to side as he takes in the room instead. At his sides, his hands clench and release, fingers looking longer and thinner than she recalls from their earlier, brief encounter. All in all, he looks decent. Even the thick scales have been dealt with, leaving mostly smooth patches that are almost normal-looking, if sallow in complexion.

She realizes the silence has spun on too long when he hitches his body slightly, wavering on the spot in what might be exhaustion or nervousness. He rocks back and forth again, arms swinging in a minute shrug, bare feet tensing and flattening against the stone floor.

Finally, he meets her gaze, head tilting up in a gesture simultaneously submissive and subversive. His pink lips curl back into a smile that is mostly grimace as he lifts his arms and sinks into a flourished bow. "...Am I... pleasing, my lady?"

His voice still sounds brittle and hoarse. Perhaps it always does.

She nods, too quickly, fighting the colour that threatens to rise in her cheeks. "It's fine," She bites out, turning to her side table with more speed than necessary. "I'm going to have a drink. You want one?"

Rocking back on his heels once more, he considers her. This smile is hesitant, but not entirely lacking in teeth. "...Of course."

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the present tense (that was part of what I agonized over) but it just sounded all wrong in past. I'm somewhat sorry for the very weird (weird...er?) Rumpelstiltskin. But mostly I'm not.


End file.
